Local telephone service providers offer a variety of optional services to their customers. The services can be broadly categorized as originating services and terminating services. Originating services are controlled by the originating or calling party's central office when the calling party places a call. In comparison, terminating services are controlled by the terminating or called party's central office when an attempt to terminate a call occurs.
One example of a terminating service is "caller identification." Caller identification provides the called party with the name and telephone number of the calling party. Caller identification is typically provided to a subscriber by its local central office. In particular, each central office ordinarily has access to a local database containing telephone numbers and the corresponding names of people within its local area. Prior to terminating a call to the called party, the central office searches its database for the telephone number of the calling party. If the telephone number is found within the database, the name corresponding to that number will be accessed and delivered to the called party by the central office.
If the telephone number and name are not within the database, the service cannot provide a name to the called party. When a service cannot identify a name corresponding to the number, it typically delivers a message indicating that the calling party's name is unavailable. Accordingly, a local database containing only a small quantity of numbers and corresponding names will generate a large number of "unavailable" messages.
An indication of unavailability provides the customer with no information about who is calling or where the call originated from. This is an undesirable result for a customer who is paying for a service that is designed to provide them with information about the person who is calling them.
The present embodiment of the invention address the problem of providing no information about the calling party when the called party's local database does not contain information about the calling party. When the called party's local database does not contain the calling party information alternative information regarding the calling party may be provided. In one embodiment, for example, the name of the state of the calling party is provided when the name of the calling party is unavailable. In another embodiment, the names of both the city and state of the calling party is provided when the name of the calling party is unavailable